


in the family

by sirenseven



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Bad Person Bruce Wayne, Casual Sex, Cock Warming, Community: dckinkmeme, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Father/Son Incest, First Time, Grooming, Hurt Dick Grayson, Internalized Victim Blaming, M/M, Sexual Abuse, Sibling Incest, Unreliable Narrator, i wrote dick & babs as platonic but i guess you could read it as potentially romantic if you want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:08:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26634874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirenseven/pseuds/sirenseven
Summary: Dick knows he's not supposed to complain about his special role in the family; this is what he's made for. He just wishes he could be like the rest of his siblings sometimes, instead offorthem. (Discomfort in six parts.)
Relationships: Barbara Gordon & Dick Grayson, Cassandra Cain/Dick Grayson, Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson/Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson/Jason Todd, Tim Drake/Dick Grayson/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 40
Kudos: 306





	in the family

**Author's Note:**

  * For [withthekeyisking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/withthekeyisking/gifts).



> I'm back at it with the [kink meme prompts](https://dckinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/766.html?thread=396798#cmt396798). I wrote like 95% of this in a single day, with slower editing since, but honestly I'm not sure how I feel about it at this point. So let me know y'all's thoughts, I guess!

**Tim.**

“Are you sure?” Tim asks, still hesitant despite the coaxing to get him this far.

Framed in front of Bruce, with the man's hands planted on his shoulders, he looks tiny. Dick, laid naked on the bed in front of them, takes that as some consolation. Tim obviously will have no idea what he's doing, but he's probably too small to cause any damage.

Not that any of them want to cause damage; Dick knows that. Even when he was the tiny one and Bruce was still so huge, he knows there's never been any _malice_. This is just what he's made for.

“Yes,” Bruce says, fingers flexing as he squeezes Tim's shoulders. “You can use him for this whenever you want. It's okay.”

Tim still looks unsure. Dick figures that's to be expected; Tim comes from a small family where they don't seem to have a designated play thing. Jason was awkward about it too, when Bruce introduced him to the concept, though Jason had a lot more bluster to hide it. Back then, Dick was just so desperately relieved Bruce still wanted him that he barely took note of the unease.

This time, he's fully aware of all Tim's naivety and uncertainty. It's Bruce who Tim looks to for confirmation though, not Dick, so Dick figures he's already halfway there.

A nudge from Bruce, and Tim climbs onto the bed over Dick. He hesitates, before ducking down for a kiss, and Dick almost chuckles at the clumsy press of lips. It's sweet really. No one's kissed him like he was breakable in a long time. Bruce used to be careful like that, ages and ages ago when Dick was still young enough they called it “playtime,” but now they've both acclimated enough to the arrangement that he'll simply manhandle Dick into his lap when the mood strikes.

Unsurprisingly, it's Bruce who pushes Tim onward, assuring him Dick doesn't need such a gentle touch. One knee on the bed, one foot on the ground, he leans over to guide Tim's hand between Dick's legs.

“Feel that?” Bruce murmurs, rubbing Tim's hand over Dick's hole. He can feel the fingers twitch.

Tim gives a shaky nod and Bruce pulls them back. His other hand emerges from his pocket with a bottle of lube to drizzle over the held hands. He quickly spreads it around, then navigates Tim's fingers back to Dick.

“You start with one,” Bruce says.

Dick bites his tongue in discomfort. The slickness keeps it from hurting, but when Bruce is guiding Tim in such a hands-on way, “one” is actually two: one of Tim's thin fingers, and one of Bruce's much blunter digits. 

Bruce walks him all the way through the process of fingering Dick open. Tim is, as expected, largely inept, but his flaws fall more on the side of over-caution than over-eagerness. He keeps glancing up to Dick's face for signs of pain, which Dick finds sweet in a sort of laughable way. Dick is here to be played with in these sessions, not to be taken care of. Bruce always said he saw it in Dick the second they met. Tim will figure it out soon enough under Bruce's coaching.

Finally, Bruce declares him prepared enough. Frankly, Dick is over-prepared, considering Tim's size and what Dick is used to, but he supposes Tim needed the time to relax.

It served its purpose. Tim is a little more confident by the time Bruce shifts back and away. He slides into Dick all on his own—and, yep, Dick knows that expression. This won't take long.

Tim manages to surprise him by pausing once he's fully seated, holding himself up to hover over Dick. “Is this okay?”

Dick falters. That's...funny. This is basically the same as it was with Jason—Tim is a little bit older, even, and Jason was a little less gentle—and yet something about it makes his stomach clench. Dick barely met Jason before they first fucked, but he's had some time to get to know Tim. It feels wrong, somehow, to do this with the kid.

Bruce would point out the ridiculousness of that thought. If this is what Tim wants, or what Bruce wants, then it's Dick's responsibility to let them have it.

“Yeah, of course,” he whispers back, giving a reassuring smile.

It's what he's here for.

**Cassandra.**

Perhaps because she never had a true model of any other kind of family before this, Cassandra took to it without the false starts of her brothers. When Bruce told her what the arrangement was at home, she had no reason to doubt him.

Now, as she wriggles out of her jeans, there's neither hesitation nor performative confidence. She could just as easily be tugging on a sweatshirt, for all she distinguishes the motion.

Dick, watching from where he lounges on a couch in the media room, grimaces. Obviously he'll do his job, but he actually was watching a show. Sure, he could pause and come back to it later, but it had been a fun change of pace to watch something live for once. With their schedules, it's a rare pleasure.

Cass pauses in her approach. Her hand, about to tug Dick off the couch, pauses, and then drops. She considers his body language for a second—not like Dick could hide it from her, even if he tried—and then flashes him a smile. Instead of pulling him to his knees in front of the couch, Cass turns herself around to sit between his legs. Dick taps his temple against hers in gratitude, watching the screen over her shoulder, as she pulls his hand down to her folds.

The rest of the family he services may have different hardware, but Dick has become a master of this too. His fingers get to work, teasing and toying with her clit, then dipping in lower down once she's slick.

When Cass is dripping wet and squirming against his chest, she pulls abruptly away to crouch in front of him. He lifts his hips obligingly to let her tug off his pants—he's not allowed underwear inside the manor—and settles back. Cass brusquely jerks him up to hardness before climbing onto his lap.

Dick wraps his arms around her waist so he can keep peering around her as she slides down on his length. On the screen, a dramatic (and, frankly, very unrealistic) shootout begins. Dick watches with slightly less interest than before, Cass giving gasps and bitten-off moans as she rides him like an over-complicated dildo.

**Jason.**

Dick's door opens just after he's gotten settled in bed for a late afternoon nap. He spent the morning sparring with Damian, who is determined to match Dick with escrima sticks, getting pleasantly sore. Then the afternoon with Bruce, just getting worn out. After the too-late night and a too-early wake up beforehand, Dick deserves a rest.

His face is buried in the pillows to block out light, but he can identify Jason on footsteps alone even before the man speaks.

“Hey, Dickie,” Jason says, annoyingly awake as he pats Dick's bare back.

A series of slides and thunks announce Jason stripping off his layers. Dick holds back a groan. He's not complaining; he swears he isn't. He knows his role, what he was made for—and he's over the moon to have Jason truly part of the family again. Everyone is finally back together again. It's just _annoying_ , sometimes. Like when he had a perfectly good plan in mind to nap, but Jason has apparently decided now is the time to be horny.

“You prepped?” Jason asks, bed dipping under his weight. Dick feels the comforter peel off him, revealing his sweatpants.

“Yeah,” Dick says hoarsely, declining to move. It's a fit of pettiness over something he has no right to be petty about, but he really wanted to _sleep_ , dammit. It's not his place to ask for a rain check, he reminds himself, before he can get it in his head to do something stupid.

Jason is already pulling off his pants. Dick gives the barest impression of help, lifting his hips only when poked.

“Oh, fuck yeah,” Jason groans, presumably spotting the plug. A second later, it jostles inside Dick as he grabs onto it. Dick presses his face tighter against the pillows to smother a noise as Jason slowly drags it out. “Fuck, Dick, you're soaked.”

Fingers dip into the come that dribbles out once he's unplugged. Bruce's, as per usual. Tim only occasionally asks Dick for help getting him out of his own head nowadays; Dick has started to suspect he might be asexual, only pursuing this method of stress relief out of habit or the desire to blend in. Jason and Cassandra call on Dick more often, to blow off steam or work out annoyance or just quell their boredom. None of them have ever held a candle to Bruce though, insatiable since the first time he ripped Dick out of that scaly green leotard.

Jason positions over him and slides in without further delay. They both groan at the friction.

Dick is tempted to see if he can nod off mid-fuck, but the fast pace Jason sets leaves him no room. He groans and whimpers into the mattress instead, wondering if Jason will be generous enough to offer a reach around.

This first. Then he can sleep later.

**Bruce.**

Dick lets his mind blank, trying to narrow his awareness to just the weight of a cock in his mouth. His knees are going to ache after this. Even with the mat Bruce gave him, the combination of the cave floor and bare legs is no joke.

He's been here long enough to lose track of time. There's just his hands linked obediently behind his back, his legs starting to go numb from sitting on them, the gentle patter of Bruce typing above. Occasionally, Bruce will twitch in his mouth, and Dick will try to suck and capitalize on it, maybe move this along, before Bruce catches his hair and orders him still again. Cockwarming has got to be the most boring of his responsibilities.

At least Cass has gotten in the habit of letting him watch TV at the same time. The idea of trying that with Bruce—say, pulling out his phone at the beginning of this to watch videos while he waited—is almost funny.

Bruce would spank him until it burned to sit for a week.

Dick hums impatiently, slurping on Bruce's cock. A hand immediately drops into his hair to pull tight. The typing stops.

“Dick,” Bruce warns.

He stops, of course; did the second Bruce grabbed him. He just wants his boredom logged for the record. Dick could be up there helping Bruce on whatever case he's working. Were he any of the others, he would be. Unfortunately, he's made for helping other ways too.

The hand clenches in his hair for longer than he expects. The keyboard stays silent. After a pause, Bruce pushes its shelf into the desk, and suddenly Dick is blinking up at an unobstructed view of his face.

“You have been good...” Bruce says. He switches from pulling Dick's hair to smoothing it.

Dick tries to push all his agreement into his eyes, holding perfectly still to demonstrate just how good he can be. _Yes, I have; please for the love of god let me get you off already._ (It's fortunate Bruce can't hear the annoyed wording inside his head.)

Bruce's hand gently curls to hold the back of his head, and with painstaking slowness draws him forward. Dick swallows instinctively as the cock already filling his mouth nudges at his throat and then plunges in. His nose mashes against Bruce's abdomen. Bruce pulls back just as languidly, until Dick's lips seal around the head alone. He repeats the same motion without pause. 

It takes forever. On each stroke, Bruce increases the pace ever so slightly. He never leaves Dick's mouth entirely, and Dick quickly catches onto sucking in breaths through his nose when he can.

After a million years, Bruce reaches a moderate pace, pumping in and out of Dick's throat with gusto. He lets out a little groan, hips stuttering against his rhythm, and that's when Dick knows to brace.

Like the flick of a switch, Bruce pounds in at bruising speed, battering Dick's throat with a force he's sure to feel tomorrow. He grunts, cock twitching, and then the deluge pours down Dick's throat. Dick frantically swallows, barely avoiding choking. When Bruce pulls back, he coughs and gasps, but he hasn't lost a single drop of come.

Bruce pets his head, smiling proudly. Dick is too busy catching his breath to smile back, but he appreciates it.

“Fath...Grayson?”

They both stiffen and turn in unison.

Damian stands at the base of the staircase, eyes wide. The stairs are just far enough askance of Bruce's back that he can see Dick in his entirely. Dick's shoulders jolt up to his ears, hands falling to cover his lap. He feels about a hundred time more naked than he did a minute ago.

“Damian,” says Bruce.

Whatever question for Dick was on Damian's lips dies. His furrowed brow turns from his kneeling mentor to his seated father.

Dick's eyes drop to the floor. He wants to send Damian away, insist he forget all about this, but it's not his to say. He can feel Bruce's gaze on him, surely with questions of his own, and avoids meeting the man's eyes.

“Come here, Damian,” says Bruce.

Small footsteps echo across the cave, coming closer. Damian stops just out of arms reach. Dick hunches up, tiny and worthless on the ground.

“What are you doing?” Damian asks tentatively.

“This is another way Dick helps us all,” Bruce explains calmly, like this is normal, like this is—But it is normal. It's the same thing he did with Jason and Tim and Cassandra. “He's very good at diffusing tension or satisfying our needs. And he's available at any time he's around.”

“For...everyone?” says Damian. His voice is too guarded to read, and Dick is too nauseous to look up.

“For the family,” Bruce clarifies.

There's a pause. Dick catches Damian's slow nod at the edge of his vision.

“Damian,” Bruce says again, and the boy snaps to attention. “This is another thing we have to keep private within the family, you understand?”

“Yes, father,” Damian says immediately. “I won't betray your trust.”

Dick dares to peeks up. Bruce looks satisfied with the answer. Damian looks...considering.

**Damian.**

Damian has more questions. Bruce easily answers each, but nothing progresses further that day. Dick tries not to examine his relief—not that it will last long. Damian has already been floating Dick mild inquiries and veiled references.

He's getting ready to participate.

Just as unnerving, Bruce has had questions for Dick too. Questions about why, in the year that Dick had to train him, he never initiated Damian into this himself. Dick demurred on his answers.

The truth is he didn't do any of this at _all_ while Bruce was thought dead. Jason wasn't around, barely interacting with the family. Tim left the country on his mission to find Bruce. Cassandra absconded for Hong Kong. Alfred had never participated himself, and made no mention of it when the others stopped.

The stranger thing is, even when they regrouped—even when Jason started making tentative in-roads with Dick and Damian's version of Batman and Robin, even when Tim came home to Gotham with his evidence—somehow they never resumed the habit. Not until Bruce returned, and everyone fell back into their rightful orbits.

So Dick just...never told Damian about it. He refused to even come up with excuses at the time. On the occasion it came to mind, Dick pushed it down and pretended he'd never remembered it to begin with.

He understands why Bruce is curious, if not outright concerned. Now that he's back, and everything is back to normal, it seems a glaring oversight that no one has explained Dick's role to Damian. But for a year there, things were just...different. Everyone was.

Everything is back the way it should be now. The only thing misplaced is the bone-deep sense of discomfort Dick can't shake—especially when Damian marches up to him in the hall three days later.

“Grayson,” he says, every inch the haughty prince Dick first met. “I have dwelled on it, and I now demand my right to take part in this...free usage.”

Dick knew it was coming, but he still stiffens. Damian is practically half his height, so it's ridiculous to feel small even as his gut clenches. Maybe it's just that Damian is being so stiff, Dick tells himself. Everyone else has long since treated it casually.

“I'm busy,” Dick blurts, exactly the thing he's not supposed to do. “I mean, I'm—I have a case that I really have to go...scout on. Before it gets dark. Otherwise I totally would.”

His backtracking comes too late. Damian is already wilting under the rejection. Dick thanks his lucky stars that the pair of them got close enough for Damian to stay and force out his thoughts instead of dismissing the conversation and bailing.

“I thought...” Damian scowls at the floor. He has a lot of different scowls; Dick recognizes this one as his anger-covering-hurt version. “I thought you did this for everyone. You've done it with all previous Robins!” (That's not entirely true; Stephanie wasn't family.) “Father said it was for everyone in the family.”

Ah.

Dick drops to a knee, putting his hand on Damian's shoulder. “Hey, no, Damian, I promise you are just as much part of the family as anyone else. I just...” God, he feels even worse for the lie now. “I just really have to handle this today.”

“Okay,” Damian mutters. He pulls his eyes up from the floor, scowling a little less. With a deep breath, his chest puffs out. “Then we will do this another time.”

Dick swallows back the wave of revulsion. “Yeah. Yeah, definitely.”

**Barbara.**

“And there's our arsonist,” Barbara finishes, clicking over to forward the information to Dick. “Now, are you going to tell me what's got you so antsy today?”

Dick pulls back from where he'd leaned over her shoulder to peer at the screen and looks down. The guise of checking his phone to ensure he received the data makes an excellent excuse. Of course Barbara would notice his anxiety after Dick hand-walked all over her apartment; he just didn't think about what to say if she asked.

“It's just...” He stares hard at his screen, seeing none of it. “Just stuff with Damian.”

“Care to share?” Barbara asks, wheeling around to face him with her eyebrows raised. “Come on, we both know you handle that kid better than anyone, and it's not like you're going to trade tips with Bruce.”

Dick swallows, horrified to find a sudden lump in his throat. He can't speak for fear of how his voice will sound.

“Whoa, hey, Dick.” Wheels roll closer, and then Barbara is sitting right in front of him, impossible to miss from where she peers up. Her face betrays genuine worry, even a hint of alarm. Dick so rarely slips up and shows hurt around her—around anyone, really. “Seriously, what's wrong?”

Dick opens his mouth, closes it, stutters out, “I—I can't—”

“Here, sit down.”

Babs herds him back until he finds himself seated on the couch. She faces him, just out of striking distance. Her anxiety is covered up, expression concerned but calm, like a well-trained guidance counselor. He hates to admit how much it helps. The illusion of harmlessly bouncing words off a blank wall is far easier to take than the reality of sharing his pain with someone he cares about.

Dick shouldn't. He knows he shouldn't. That's the one condition they _all_ have: never discuss it outside the family.

But the thought of...the thought of having to do that for Damian too...

“Just,” he starts. Dick swallows, steeling himself up. “Just...please don't say anything until I'm done.”

He only catches the hesitation because he knows her so well, before she sits back and nods him on. “Okay.”

He can tell how little she wants to, always wanting to weigh in, but Barbara stays true to her word. As he speaks, her eyes go from wide to narrowed, face blanching, hands twisting together in her lap until they're clenched in fists. By the time he's recapped how Bruce started this whole thing, how he opened it to Jason and Tim and Cass, her lips are pressed together so tightly they've gone white.

“And now Damian found out about it and Bruce explained everything and I—I know I'm supposed to, but—I just don't...I've been putting him off all week,” Dick finishes, fighting hard against the tightness in his throat. “And I don't know how I'm going to do it.” He drops his head. “I wish I could just be one of them.”

Barbara stays silent. Dick stares down at his clenched hands. After a long minute, he realizes she's still holding to her agreement, waiting him out to make sure she's not interrupting.

“That's it,” Dick says quietly. “I'm done.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Dick,” says Barbara.

Dick flinches.

“No, that's—I'm sorry. I didn't mean that against you.” She pulls off her glasses, pressing the heel of her hand into her forehead. “ _Fuck_. Dick, that's—that's awful.”

He clenches his jaw. Dick can pretend, even to himself, he was just looking for friendly advice on the Damian part of it. But if he's being honest, he knew the reaction would be more extreme than that.

“That's horrific, what they've done to you,” Barbara says, leaning forward to catch his gaze. She's trembling, the effort to hold back her fury obvious. “That was _wrong_.”

Dick opens his mouth.

“No, listen. It's _wrong_. This is a horrible, cruel, awful thing that has been done to you. You should never have been hurt like that.”

He looks away. The blunt words and barely-concealed anger are a little too much to take dead on.

“Yeah,” he says, not entirely committed to it but aware he's supposed to say something.

“God, all of them?” she asks, and then continues before Dick can answer. “No, I know you said that; all of them. I just... _Tim_? Jason? Ca...” Oh, no, this is worse. The way she barely stops her voice from breaking is so much worse. “Cass?”

Dick's entire body floods with guilt. He knows how much she loves Cassandra, practically mother and daughter before Bruce swooped in to adopt her and obscure all previous relationships. He never wanted to break that, never wanted to make Barbara think Cass had done anything bad.

“All of them,” he says, anyway. “All the family.”

“Okay.” Barbara breathes loud and slow, obviously calming herself down. Dick closes his eyes, trying to copy the rhythm. “Okay. We're—I'm going to make sure this stops, okay? You won't have to do this anymore.”

Dick shrivels into the couch. “Bruce won't like that.”

“Bruce isn't going to be in charge around here anymore.”

She says it so sharply he wants to flinch, but so certainly he can't doubt her. When Dick is able to be reasonable, when he has the rare moment where he can acknowledge that their vigilante version of normal is not remotely _normal_ , he's...aware a lot of people wouldn't like this. There are plenty of places Barbara could go for help, if she even needs it. With her best efforts, Bruce could be out of Gotham before the day ends.

Dick should stop her. He should call Bruce to confess what he's done and ask for instructions on how to fix it.

He doesn't.

The silence Barbara allows him is a relief. Dick sits quietly on the couch for a few minutes, listening to the hum of all Barbara's machinery and the distant rumble of traffic, and thinking about just how much things will change. He's not sure what he'll do if he can't be useful like this. He's been useful as Nightwing too, seen all his siblings be useful and loved without providing Dick's services, but the idea of that working for Dick just seems...impossible.

Dick finally looks up, a new thought occurring to him. Barbara is still in the same spot, giving him time. She's such an uncompromising badass sometimes it's easy to forget how kind she is.

“What about...” Dick falters, “the kids?”

He can picture their reactions to being taken in or put on some kind of trial. Cass, taut in anxious uncertainty, guilty but not knowing where she went wrong. Jason will go defensive, all his barriers rising, and only get harder the more he's pushed. Tim will probably collapse in on himself, eyes dropped and heavy with shame. He hates doing things wrong; reacts almost as poorly to failure as Dick himself.

Barbara hesitates. “Damian can stay, of course—”

“What about the _others_?”

“They participated,” Barbara says carefully. “There have to be...consequences.”

Dick shakes his head fervently. “No, they didn't—” He doesn't know how to explain. Because he knows what she thinks, he really does, and he gets why, but it's not—it's not _like_ that, not really. “They're just...doing what they're supposed to.” 

None of them ever pushed back against their roles. All of them were way too young.

“Dick,” Barbara says softly, rolling forward to take his hand. “You don't...you don't have any responsibility for them, I promise. I know you want to protect everyone, but it's okay to step back. You don't ever have to see them again if you don't want to.”

Dick stares at her, flabbergasted. “Of course I want to see them.”

She blinks. “They took advantage of you.”

“No, they...” Dick scrambles for an explanation. He knows he can't convey how he feels, knows she won't understand the moral argument when he's so twisted up, but maybe the legal one... “I was an adult when they... Tim was fourteen. Jason was thirteen. I was the adult.”

“You were abused,” says Barbara, soft and gentle. As soon as she says it, her expression falters, and then she puts her face in her free hand, glasses held delicately away. “And they were abused. Okay. I get it. But I still...they kept doing it. They kept—using you like that, disregarding how it hurt you.”

“They were doing what they were supposed to,” Dick says.

This time, he thinks she starts to get it.

“Okay,” Barbara repeats, squeezing his hand. “We're not going to throw them into the fire. But we are...removing them from the situation. For a little while, at least. Until they understand. Then you can see them as much—or as little—as you want, alright?”

Dick nods, eyes on their interlaced fingers. He couldn't do this. He couldn't do this if she weren't taking the reigns and planning the logistics. He doubts he'll be able to do anything but watch as it all burns down.

“And...Bruce?” Barbara asks.

He intends to give the same argument, he really does. He's not supposed to be upset over things he was meant for. Dick knows exactly what Bruce would want him to do. He also knows what Barbara wants him to say. And he knows which appeals more.

Dick _wants_ to want to see Bruce, but...

His hesitation makes things clear enough. Barbara nods, leaning back but keeping hold of his hand, even when Dick clenches down on it far too hard.

“I'm going to make sure Bruce is taken away,” she says, “and not a danger to _anyone_. And Damian's going to stay right here with us, or with someone reliable, and the others can get some help, and you are going to be _safe_. I promise you, Dick, you are going to be safe, and they won't hurt you like that again.

“And you don't even have to say the word,” she continues, “because I'm doing this with or without you. So you can toss out any misplaced guilt you have, because I'm doing it all myself.”

Dick almost smiles. They both know she wouldn't be doing anything at all if he hadn't told her, but it's a sweet attempt.

“No,” Barbara says, thinking. “No, I take that back. You can toss out any misplaced guilt because this was the _right thing_ to do. This is a good thing, Dick. And I'm so proud of you for telling me. You could ask for a million times harsher consequences on them and it would still be the right thing.”

He looks down, throat tight. He doesn't know about that. And “proud,” like he's done anything impressive here...

“Dick,” Barbara says softly. “Can you look at me for a second?”

It's a thoroughly unappealing concept, but he owes her that much. He pulls his eyes up.

Barbara's shine. “I'm sorry if this is a lot. I can't imagine how hard it must be to take all at once. I just really hope you understand that this—this 'arrangement' was wrong, and that you deserve so much better.”

Dick swallows, faltering.

“You know that, right?” Barbara says, very gentle. “Everything they told you—everything Bruce told you was a _lie_. You deserve better.”

Made for this. Bruce always said it, with complete certainty. It was never his fault (like a hundred things were never his fault); it was Dick's fault, for being so alluring. Except everyone else seemed perfectly able to stop when Bruce wasn't around. Dick's voice feels completely dried up, throat sore with repressed emotion, but—

“I deserve better,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on [tumblr](https://writerseven.tumblr.com/)


End file.
